I believe most of you will agree that finding good web or mobile app developer or company nowadays is quite a challenging task, as it's a cluttered market and there are plenty of options.
Agree? Your answer probably is 'Yeah, Most of the time'.And what if I change my question to "Is finding a good developer from India is a very daunting and tricky task?"
Your answer most probably is 'Definitely'.One of the common stereotypes is that coming across a good developer from India is practically impossible. However, with a bit of effort and patience, you can find a reputable and skilled team of developers from India, and this will provide you with an abundance of benefits, primarily in the financial sense.
But, to find reliable app developers, you must know where to look, what to look for and how to make the right choice.
In this guide, I'm going to show you:The best ways to find the good app developers from India, who are going to get the job done just as well as local developers would while saving 50-60% on cost as well. And once you have understood how to identify/locate, I will be sharing the best practices to follow so that you are not fooled out by mobile app development companies in India .
I have divided the guide in following sections:
- How to locate the right app development companies
- First level screening
- What to take care of during evaluation and testing phase
- Final checks before you make an offer
Is a bit lengthy but will be worth it especially the last few pointers which you may have never thought of or come across anywhere else.
Let's get started:
The online world is your friend
Finding and hiring the right people for your project has been made much easier in the past couple of years, as numerous platforms for finding individual and teams of freelancers have started counting millions of users. Let's take a look at the places where you should start searching for the right developers from India for your project.
Upwork
Toptal
Freelancer
Project4Hire
This is a great platform : that is aimed at those who want to share their project information and start seeking people from all around the world. This is a great way to receive an abundance of offers from people around the world, and you can easily pick someone you think is right for your project.
Like with some of the above mentioned freelancing platforms, you can see someone's past experiences as well. The platform is particularly rich with developers of different kinds, which makes it a great place to conduct your search.
FlexJobs
If your project is not quite big, a better option might be to keep looking on other platforms, but if your project is big, you can find quite a lot of applicants on this website, some of which are certainly representatives of developer teams from India.
Guru
Additionally, people keep all of their business information on the platform, which will give you an insight into every tiny detail about the person you are trying to hire. You can also find companies and see profiles of each of their employees.
For example, you find a team of developers from India, and you know your project needs and what type of coders you require, so you can look at all their team members and review their LinkedIn profiles. There, you can find their education level, experience and any possible comments from previous employers.
This type of insight was impossible only a decade ago, but this network has allowed companies to gather different types of business information about a person they would like to hire. This will make it fairly easy for you to determine whether a team is capable of handling the project you have in mind.
Outsourcely
It is great for finding teams of freelancers from different parts of the world, and since people on this platform are looking for ongoing projects, it might be a perfect solution for your, if your project would take several months to complete.
It is a great solution for finding a team of people who are looking for long-term collaboration. Unlike other platforms, this one comes with support for a browser video, which is a great way of communication.
Other online resources
For example, Stackoverflow is a great place where you can monitor questions and answers provided by different developers from around the globe. It is a perfect place to get in contact with a great developer. Additionally, you can find quite a lot of influential people in the forums who certainly know a team that would easily be able to carry out your project.
Another interesting online place is GitHub, a place where you can see how good coders are contributing to a variety of open source projects. This might be a place where you can actually find an outstanding coder who might be just the perfect pick for your project, not to mention that he or she probably has a lot of friends who would make an incredible team. If you already have a team in mind, you could check out their GitHub contributions, as it will immediately tell you the coder's skill level.
lot of friends who would make an incredible team. If you already have a team in mind, you could check out their GitHub contributions, as it will immediately tell you the coder's skill level.
Hackathon
A completely different option
Companies often forget that there are those who specialize in making the outsourcing process much easier. HR agencies are a great way of finding a highly competent and experienced team of developers from India. However, in this case you will have to spend some time looking for the right type of agency for your needs.
Also, the abovementioned platforms will only cost you your time (Number of responses sometime can be overwhelming), but relying on a hiring agency is going to cost you money as well, which can quickly add up, especially if you have a big project in mind. The positive thing, though, lies in the fact that you have nothing to worry about, as the outsourcing company is already connected with good developers from around the world, and they will find you the perfect team for your project.
These are the best options that you have when it comes to finding a team that might be suitable for your project. However, identifying them as a perfect fit is a completely different task, as there are numerous things that you have to keep in mind.
The first goal is to find a list of potential teams that you are thinking of hiring. Even though this part of the whole process takes the most time, it is good to visit multiple platforms, rely on different resources and create a list of candidates that you wish to know more about. Let's take a look at the most important things that you should take into consideration before deciding who to start testing.
Before hiring the team, test their abilities
Testing coders has become a viable option in the past couple of years, as there are online ways to check the way they approach problem solving, and there are also ways to test their coding skills, not to mention the great fact that you don't have to know programming in order to conduct these tests. They are a highly efficient way of eliminating those who are obviously not ready to undertake the challenges of your project.
Let's take a look at some of the ways in which you could test a coding team from India.
Test project
For example, if your project demands an application for iOS and Android, you could let the developers create an app that would integrate social media sharing features. This is not crucial for the functionality of your app, but it is certainly going to be one part of it.
However, you will be able to test their coding skills, as simple tasks should not take a long time to be completed. Additionally, you will get to see what working with this type of a team would look like and how good their communication is.
Don't forget that you should avoid wasting anyone's time, so make sure to offer payment for the test project, this will also avoid any complications in the final decision making process.
For such tests projects, followed are some key factors which play very crucial role in devising and evaluating the development teams-- You should be capable of devising the test project or must have helping hands to do it for you.
- You should have fair idea about the outcome of test project, expected completion timeframes, accuracy level etc.
- You must be able to evaluate that the candidate is not cheating i.e. instead of the real employee someone else is not attending the test process.
To overcome above challenges, one can deploy following methods.
Perform Live testing sessions
One of the most useful online tools is a Remote Interview platform, which comes with an abundance of features and ways to test a coder. This is a great way to see how capable a coder is, and it is also great for seeing how a coder approaches problems.
The platform comes with the following features:- Support for multiple programming languages - this is a great option as the platform is going to let you test different team members for different types of coding languages.
- Preset tests or ability to make your own - this is good for those without any prior coding knowledge as preset test are created by the platform creators and serve to test a variety of coding skills. Once the screening is complete, you can easily access the metrics showing how long the test lasted, and what the candidates score was. Additionally, a good idea is to hire a coder who will be able to analyze the results for you and let you know which team has achieved the best overall score. Furthermore, the coder could help you create a custom test which would be focused on certain areas that would be used in your project.
- Detailed analytics - no matter if the test is performed live or is taken at home, you will have an abundance of data about how the coder has performed. You can even track the step-by-step progress made by the coder, which is a great way to see how his mind works and what his underlying approach to coding and problem solving is.
- Live view or take to home projects - live view gives you the ability to follow a coder's progress on the spot. On the other hand, home projects are created and sent to the coder with a set deadline. After he or she is finished, they send you back the test project and you can access all the important information that is also accessible in the live view.
- The perfect interview - the interview is also integrated in this platform and it is perfect because it lets you go over the code that the interviewee has written. If you have no coding experience, you can hire a professional coder to conduct the interview, which is going to provide you with enough valuable information about the team of coders you are planning to hire.
One of the main benefits of this platform is the fact that it saves a great deal of time for the interviewer and is capable of processing a high number of interviewees in a short amount of time. If you are planning to test a couple of teams simultaneously, this is probably your best option.
Kolbe test is a cool idea
This test is used for various types of screening tests, as it is not directly related to coding, but as programming involves a lot of creativity and problem solving, it is a great test to consider for the team you are planning to hire.
Having them take a Kolbe test is going to allow you to perceive how this team attacks work challenges and what their approaches to solving them are. The result scores will let you see the team's strengths, which might show that they are well capable of solving complicated tasks.
Use tools like Codility
One of the features that makes the platform great is the option of conducting a test for a full stack development team, which is perfect for this situation, as you want to test out a whole team of developers from India.
The platform lets you create your own tests, or you can rely on the existing standardized tests. The platform is very popular, which means that it brings great results. The interview option is also integrated. It is a great way to test out a whole team of developers. If you are someone without prior coding knowledge, this platform is a great choice for you.
It is also important to mention that the platform has a live engine which checks for plagiarism, meaning that you can check any piece of code that is submitted to you and see whether a coder is using someone else's code to solve the given task.
However, if you know a thing or two about coding, or you have a good developer next to you, the next option might be a better choice for you.
Screen sharing
These are the best methods that you can use to access the quality of the developers you want to hire. Practical skill is very important in this line of work, so there is not going to be any need to pay special attention to the team's CV page.
The results from these tests will be more than enough for you to make the right decision. Take your time in the decision-making process. While you are considering to hire a particular team, these are some things that you could pay special attention to
Perform past customer reference check which will increase chances of hiring right person to 90%
If hiring via freelancing platforms then it's a little easier. Most freelancing platforms will give you a glimpse at how good a developer is. Previous client ratings and previous projects are the two most important things you should be focusing on.
The most important parameters in evaluating a developer you should focus on are the following:- Professionalism - this is a great metric that describes a person or a team perfectly. Professionalism includes manners, quality of delivery, quality of communication and respecting the deadlines. This is why you should pay special attention to this rating.
- Response rate - this rating is going to tell you how often can you expect the developer to answer your questions. There are always some emergencies that might occur during project development, and these are the situations when you want to have a responsive developer who is going to answer your updates as soon as possible. You should be looking for someone that responds to you as soon as possible.
- Communication skills - you don't want to end up with developers who are not going to be able to understand you. We will get into more details about this topic a bit later, but remember that at least one of the developers needs to be fluent in English.
- Meeting deadlines - pay attention to this rating especially. This is true testament to the quality of a good developer. You are not looking for developers who can finish your project. You are looking for developers who can deliver your project in a given deadline. Make sure that the team you are planning to hire is rated highly on this point. It means that they are going to be able to give you a deadline and explain how much time they need, and that they are going to respect that deadline.
- Quality of the product - this is a great representation of how skilled the team you're planning to hire is. Good developers know about the underlying architecture of anything they code. This is very important for any type of project, as you never know when you will need to improve your application, website or any piece of software with additional features. Without a good initial "structure", adding features can be a real problem, in some cases even impossible, therefore, make sure that the team of developers you are planning to hire is capable of building a strong foundation for your project, making it possible for you to easily tweak and tune the product later on. This is why this metric is so important.
- Overall impression - this is the overall rating that the developer is going to have. Usually, platforms rate their freelancers from 1 to 5, so avoid taking into consideration those who are rated below 4. Coding is a very precise career, a developer can either deliver or not, meaning that ratings are an objective representation of a team's capability.
Ratings are the direct measurement of the developers' quality, but you should also take into consideration the number of past experiences. For example, a team of developers might have a rating of 5, but the rating comes from a single project which is quite different than yours.
On the other hand, there is a team of developers with a rating of 4.5, but they have 10 or 15 different projects behind them. This shows that there is a greater amount of experience behind the team and that they were able to deliver on various types of projects, making them a better option.
Therefore, when looking at the experience, take into consideration both rating and experience, it shows what the whole team is capable of and whether they can deliver your project the way you want them to.
Contact their previous clients and ask for their experience with the team
If you are hiring from other channels and sources then you must request references from the services provider. Best way to take feedback is to connect with their previous clients via phone and get complete understanding of the possible vendors.
Ratings are a good way to make positive first impressions, but there are numerous cases where they do not coincide with the real level of expertise of a development team or the experience of the customer. The rating system can sometimes be taken advantage off.
Use email to introduce yourself and state what you want from the development team's client. If there is no response, you can always go with a phone call, which is a more direct approach. In the email or the telephone conversation, it is essential to stress that you want to either communicate via video, e.g. on Skype, or in person. As email is not quite the best way of getting all the answers you are interested in.
Meeting in person is the best option, as you can get into all the details that you want to know about the developers. Skype is a second option, but it is the only option when the company or a client is far away. Still, it is a better form of communication than exchanging mail, as you can ask a few quick-fire questions and get an immediate answer.
Remember though, contacting a single previous client is not going to be the best way of checking the developer team's reliability. Look at the whole list of previous clients and try to get in contact with as many of them as possible. This is going to allow you to get a realistic impression of the developer team.
Before the conversation, prepare yourself with a series of questions that are of the utmost importance to you:
- Did they respect their deadlines - when someone gives you a deadline, it is important that it is respected. And directly asking a previous client about this fact is going to give you a clear image about the team's ability to deliver the project in the given time.
- Were there any communication problems - being able to establish great communication is essential for every project, especially if it is a big project. Remember to ask whether communication was clear and whether the team has at least one coder or representative that is fluent in English. This is essential for establishing a normal contact and exactly explain what are your project details.
- What coding language was used in the project - this is going to be a great overview of the team's capabilities and the programming languages they are good at, so that you'll know whether their skills and experience are useful for your project.
- What was the size of the project - this also shows how skilled the team is and how consistent it is. Bigger projects are much harder to carry out. The higher the number of bigger projects the team has behind it, the better. It shows that the team is going to be able of delivering your project on schedule, even if it is technically complicated.
- Would the client work with them again - this is the best indicator of whether the client was satisfied with the overall performance of a team. A positive answer is a great plus that you should put into consideration, especially if your project is an important and big one.
This whole process is a perfect way to create a list of teams which you are going to test. Let's move on to analyzing which ways you can see how good a team actually is. as well before you decide to start working with them.
Focus on Project Management Process and Communication to get better turnaround time and performance
The perfect conditions would be to have a team where every coder is fluent in English, but if the team has at least one member who speaks the language well, it is going to be enough to hire them, especially if they perform well.
Verbal communication is not to only thing you should be worried about; you should also demand that the team is familiar with one of the commonly used project management tools, as it is going to be much easier for you to follow the project's progress. With a project management tool, you will be in a position to regularly see whether the team is moving forward fast enough to meet the deadlines. Avoid hiring a team if you are not going to be able to check the progress the team is making.
Some other very important factors you must pay attention to before hiring a developer in India are-
Going through all these phases will allow you to truly find a worthy team of people, but keep in mind that you can always do more.
- For example, a great background check that you could do is a request of a Certificate of Incorporation. This document is going to allow you to see when the team's company was founded. The older the date is, the better; it shows that it is a team of reliable, consistent and skilled developers who have survived in a competitive market, and it also shows that they are not lying in their CV.
- Additionally, you can always lay out a contract that will put them in a difficult position. In this case, some resistance in the form of negotiation on their part is a good sign, as it shows that the company already has experience with contracts and it also means that they realize how important they are. If you see less resistance, it is a sign that you are dealing with an inexperienced company and that you should maybe move on, as they do not understand how legally important contracts actually are.
- Today, most of the companies have NDAs signed with their vendors. If you have got an NDA in place with them then it can be a good idea to ask them to use some of their other project's codes for your project and see their reaction. If they answer without blinking the eyes, what does it reflect? Probably that they do not care about NDA that much?
These are the best ways in which you can identify good development teams from. It is important not to rush the whole process. The more thorough the research you do is and the more time you spend interviewing teams, the better the chances are that you are going to be able to find a perfect group of developers who are going to fit your needs. Stay dedicated and focused on the important qualities; it is going to lead you to exactly what you are looking for.
Finoit Technologies is a renowned and respected mobile application development company providing Web and Mobile app development services. We have developed over 450 mobile apps, and have assisted many solopreneurs in their journey of startups by functioning as a tech partner and rolling out their product ideas. For questions/queries, you may write to us at info@finoit.com